Re: Philosophy underlying LO? LO298

Jim Michmerhuizen (jamzen@world.std.com)
Thu, 2 Mar 1995 16:47:03 +0001 (EST)

On Mon, 27 Feb 1995, John Conover wrote in LO274:

> Jim Michmerhuizen writes in LO260:
>
> > In an earlier post today I alluded to how every tiniest fact participates
> > or plays a role in an infinity of hierarchies and structures - not just
> > one. Some of these structures, for example, are "all of the _FALSE_
> > theories about the nature of the universe" (due credit here to Jorge Luis
> > Borges even if I _can't_ pronounce his name). There's no experiment
> > _within_ the facts that can force, by deductive logic, some interpretation
> > _of_ the facts.
>
> Actually, there are some industrial grade thinkers that concur with
> your statement, for example the logician, Rudy Rucker. He elaborates
> on the subject in:
>
> @book{Rucker,
> address = "Boston, Massachusetts",
> author = "Rudy Rucker",
> publisher = "Houghton Mifflin Company",
> title = "Mind Tools",
> year = 1993}
>
I'll try to pick it up soon.

> (which is a very good book, BTW,) and presents some very formidable
> arguments in support of your premiss. Such systems that exhibit this
> phenomena are usually called fractal or non-linear dynamic systems. It
> does indeed appear that social institutions are such a system. As an

Yes. I believe that the shift of perspective afforded to us by the new
understanding of chaos and nonlinear systems is more encompassing than
either quantum theory or relativity. The present revolution dwarfs
anything since Newton.

And frankly I'm welcoming it. There were a lot of things I never liked
about "science", back when "science" meant "finding Newton-type laws for
whatever you happen to be looking at" and "Newton-type laws" meant "slap
numbers on everything and then find at least a couple of plausible
closed-form algebraic expressions with time as an independent variable
that look like they might have some predictive power". Newton did that
for the planets, and from then until now everybody's been trying to do
that for economics and sociology and psychology and biology and a lot of
other *logy's. And then the "philosophers of science" get PhD's for
wondering about the reversibility of time! The closed solution is the
real conceptual villain in here, and it's the closed solution -- the
analytical algebraic expression -- that is the _FIRST_ casualty of
nonlinear systems study. Chaotic systems _DON'T_ have closed-form
solutions with time as an independent variable; LaPlace goes down with a
stake in his heart.

And the glorious paradox in all of this is that it's accomplished without
giving up ordinary causality. Even chaotic systems don't have "free
choice"; each momentary state is continously connected to the one before
and the one after. (For centuries after Newton, it was commonly argued
that unpredictability was inconsistent with causality. Tee-hee.)

As I said in another post, we are indeed living in interesting times.

> interesting side bar, and case in point, in a biography of George
> Washington, recently aired on PBS, it was mentioned that liberal
> revolution that swept the western world in the late 1700's was created by
> Washington. As the story goes, he was a young officer, and in command of
> some French troops that had captured some Native American Indians. Do to
> some mix up in procedural issues, one of the Indians was shot by a French
> guard, which caused an uprising in the Indian Nation. To exercise
> authority over the situation, the British had to send the army, which over
> extended the British, financially, so they imposed taxes on the Colonist
> to pay for the intervention. The Colonist rebelled against the taxes, and
> had to enlist the help of the French Government, against the British, to
> resolve the issue militarily. To pay for the intervention by the French
> Army, the French Government had to raise taxes on the French populace, who
> rebelled, overthrowing the Government. And, Liberal Democracies were
> installed in both countries.
>
> Washington was not known for being a meticulous manager, but this
> seemingly inconsequential and singular management indiscretion, in this
> instance, had significant and far reaching ramifications that were in no
> way foreseeable.
>
A real butterfly, perturbing a real climate! I didn't know the story;
thanks.

Regards
jamzen@world.std.com
There are more different kinds of people in the world than there are
people...